'Butler' and 'We're the Millers' stay on top of new releases

Despite three new releases hitting theatres, the top two films were returning releases. In week two, The Butler led with $17 million, a scant 30% drop from opening weekend. In second place, the comedy We're the Millers dipped 25% to $13.5 million in its third week, a sign that audiences are connecting with this drug smuggling caper.

The World's End had the best relative performance of the three new offerings. Generating $8.9 million on 1,549 screens, fans of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg clearly turned out. Devotees of the so-called "Cornetto Trilogy" (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are the first two genre-skewering comedies) gave the final installment its best opening yet, drawing an audience that skewed male, with the majority of attendees under 30.

Many in the industry expected that the horror feature You're Next would top the box office, but
instead this tale of a family under siege was the worst of the lot, opening to just $7 million. Just when you think horror is a sure thing, a movie like this falls flat. In fact, it was the worst horror movie opening yet in 2013. Still, its budget was likely fairly low, unlike this week's biggest loser: The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.

Lily Collins stars in this adaptaion of a young adult novel, which was made for $60 million in hopes that it would launch a trilogy. No dice. Instead, the feature had a weekend total of $9.3 million,
and a five-day opening of $16 million. The audience was 68% female, with 46% of those turning out under 21. Even this bulls'-eye demographic turnout didn't prevent them from giving it a CinemaScore rating of "B+," when the same audience likely would have given Twilight an "A++!++!"

Blue Jasmine expanded into over 1,200 theatres this weekend, and it held on to its audience. The per-screen average dropped two-thirds, which is actually a fairly strong hold for such an aggressive expansion. That meant the Woody Allen comedy finished ninth with $4.3 million. That's a bit off Midnight in Paris, but the strength of the figures suggests that this story of a rich housewife married to Madoff-like villian could approach the $30-40 million range, compared to Paris' $56 million total.